Ashcroft Targets U.S. Cybercrime

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, John Young wrote:

>Why bust Dmitry and not the head of  ElcomSoft if the
>primary crime is commercial gain? That he is claimed
>to be the copyright holder is thin stuff, for that does not
>support his being the main commercial beneficiary (unless
>the FBI has evidence that was not revealed about Elcomsoft's
>internal finances).

To me, it seems quite consistent with the way the DMCA is crafted and
currently applied. If you look at who's likely to present the most trouble
with circumvention, it's all the individual coders out there, mostly open
source people and recreational hackers, putting together decryption programs
for fun/compatibility/fame. If you want to "send a clear signal" to these
people, you bust one of their kind, not the head of the corporation.

>That Dmitry was busted has a stench of scapegoatism, and ElcomSoft may not
>be altogether innocent, not least for sending Dmitry into the lion's den.

This would be another reasonable guess, of course. Who knows?

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front